


Come Live with Me and Be My Love

by Neyiea



Series: home is where you are [10]
Category: LazyTown
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Moving In Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 11:13:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9721739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: It's time to make this house their own.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My Valentine's gift to this fandom, which I love dearly.  
> Title from The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe.

Robbie has just finished laying the final drop cloth out over the floor when the doorbell rings and he all but flies out of the room and up the short stairs to the landing at the front entrance. The door is already open by the time he arrives and Stephanie rushes inside, smiling wide as she drops her backpack off by the stairs that lead to the upper level while Sportacus follows in at a more sedate pace.

“Are we ready to paint?”

“We’re ready to put on the primer.” He tells her, sharing a grin with Sportacus over her head. “We can paint after dinner, once we’re sure the primer is dry.”

“I’ve never painted a room before! I can’t wait,” she tells him excitedly, hooking an arm in his and leading him down the stairs and past the living area into the room that will, someday soon, be completely and undeniably hers.

The trim around the windows has been taped, the drop cloths are down, three paint rollers and trays are out along with a wide array of paint brushes, and cans of primer and paint sit in the center of the room.

“Can we start right away?”

“Did you remember to bring older clothes to work in?”

She nods.

“Change into those first, just in case there’s an accident.”

Stephanie nods again and dashes out of the room, and Robbie can hear her footfalls fade as she gets further up the stairs.

Sportacus comes to stand beside him, wrapping an arm around Robbie’s waist. 

“She’s so excited about moving in. I’m pretty sure she’s marked the day we’re aiming to be finished everything for on every calendar we own.”

Robbie leans against him with a smile. “I’m excited too.”

House hunting had, a first, been a little overwhelming. How much space was just enough space, what was close enough to Stephanie’s school, what had a big enough backyard, plenty of windows to let in natural light, and was within their budget?

Robbie isn’t even sure how many places they’d looked at before they had finally stumbled upon this treasure. 

The house is a quaint two story. It was built into a hill so Stephanie’s room, though technically in the basement, still has two large windows while the living area right next to her room has a pair of French doors that lead out into the moderately sized backyard. The upper level has a master bedroom and bath, a smaller bedroom, and a perfectly sized kitchen and dining room.

It hadn’t taken very long for them all to settle on the idea that this was the place for them.

Robbie and Sportacus have been making small touch ups here and there over the past month, both of them handy enough with tools that they’d been able to make a few changes in regards to fixing up leaky pipes, dry walling, and tearing out worn carpet to lay down new flooring before they start focussing on the more decorative aspects.

He’d brought all of his own furniture over a few days before his lease had run out, and it hadn’t taken him long at all to set up his office, which was situated on the top floor next to the master bedroom. He hadn’t bothered putting a new coat of paint on the muted green walls, and as soon as his desk had been set up and his plants were laid out in front of the window it had felt just as it ought to. 

All the other rooms feel empty though, unfinished and sterile. His own bed seems too small to be in the master bedroom, his lone towel and face cloth a solitary glimpse of colour in the upstairs bathroom, the small couch he’d had in the living area of his apartment isolated in the larger space the makes up the basement. He doesn’t sleep here at night, the bed is truly just for napping purposes, and he only has a few things tucked into the fridge and cupboard to eat during the day since he always has breakfast and dinner with his family.

He’s eager for when Sportacus and Stephanie can start moving their furniture in, eager to see this house change from the place that they bought to the place that was irrefutably theirs. 

The first step in all of that will be painting Stephanie’s room.

“Today, Stephanie’s room. Tomorrow we can start on the kitchen.”

“And next week?”

Robbie threads their fingers together. 

“Next week, our room. I want to look over the paint chips with you again before we settle on a colour.”

“I would look over the paint chips with you a thousand times.”

“I think that’s the most domestic thing that anyone has ever said.”

Sportacus grins and presses a kiss to Robbie’s cheek. “Even more domestic than this?” He clears his throat, and then lowers his voice to a soft whisper. “I want to pick out curtains with you, and look at kitchen cabinets with you, and buy light fixtures with you.”

Robbie grins, cheeks flushing happily. “What else?”

“Well…” Sportacus raises their connected hands to press a kiss to Robbie’s knuckles. “I want to assemble IKEA furniture with you, and paint with you, I want to work beside you as we make this place our own. I want to buy one of those huge, interconnected photo frames and put it up on a wall with all of our favourite pictures so that whenever anyone visits they can see how much I love my family.”

Robbie ducks to press his forehead against Sportacus’s.

“And once this is all done,” Sportacus continues, “and everything is exactly how we want it, I can’t wait to make every decision about our wedding with you.”

“I can’t wait for it either,” Robbie breathes, heart fluttering in his chest as he thinks about the handful of things they had talked about before mutually deciding that wedding preparations should be put on hold for the more imminent task of house-hunting and moving.

They share another smile at the sound of Stephanie rushing down the stairs and Robbie moves to start pouring the primer into the trays.

Together they roll the tinted primer onto the walls, the task completed quickly with all three of them working at once. By the time they start on the last wall Stephanie has switched out her roller for a small brush, writing out little notes that will be hidden away soon. The most notable one reads: I love my family, which she surrounds with hearts and stars. Robbie pulls out his phone to take a picture of it before it’s covered up for good.

Once all the walls have been coated and their rollers and brushes have been washed they head back to Sportacus’s apartment to start making dinner and Stephanie cheerily discusses her plans for the backyard for all of the short drive. She and Sportacus are both very passionate about the idea of having their own little garden, and Robbie has already started making a list of all the plants Stephanie mentions so that he can buy her all the seeds and bulbs she could ever want as a housewarming gift.

He can picture it now: working in his office in the late spring and getting glimpses out of his window of his soon-to-be husband and daughter happily toiling away in the sun, dedicatedly tending to their sprouts.

Both of them grinning ear to ear when he renounces his work for an hour or two so that he can toil alongside them.

He’s smiling so wide by the time they get out of the car that Sportacus leans towards him, curious, and asks what he’s thinking about.

“Us,” Robbie says as he takes hold of Sportacus’s hand. “You know I always smile when I think about us.”

Sportacus beams and folds their fingers together.

“I do, too.”

A few minutes later Robbie begins to peel and chop vegetables alongside Stephanie, a fond smile on his face all the while as he thinks about the steadily closing gap between the present and the day that they’re aiming for everything to be ready to move in.

If he happens to tear up a little at the thought of it he firmly resolves to blame it on the onions Stephanie is slicing into, even if it’s incredibly likely that no one would believe him.

Once the prep work is completed Stephanie moves to set the table while Robbie props his hip against the counter, eyes trailing over Sportacus’s back as he idly twists the ring on his finger. He thinks about what their kitchen will look like once it’s done, what it will be like to cook there together, what the first family meal they make in their home should be.

Something special, in order to commemorate the occasion. But what?

Stephanie taps at his shoulder and he somehow manages to drag his eyes away, smiling warmly when he notices that she’s holding something out of sight behind her back, mostly certain that that his educated guess at what she’s hiding is correct.

There’s an unspoken rule that they’re not going to make any big plans about the wedding until they’ve all moved into the house, but that doesn’t stop Stephanie from occasionally sliding photos of venues, centerpieces, and on one memorable day a thirteen page print out about the ‘language of flowers’ their way.

No one can fault her for being so enthusiastic, though, and honestly just the reminder about how happy she is for them warms Robbie up right to the marrow of his bones and makes him feel extraordinarily content.

“What is it you’ve got there?”

“A present for you to keep in your office.”

“Oh?” His curiosity is piqued now, and even Sportacus pauses what he’s doing to look over his shoulder to try and catch a glimpse.

Stephanie grins up at him before taking a photo frame out from behind her back and holding it out to him.

Robbie takes the frame slowly, eyes tracking over the image encased behind glass: a picture that Stephanie had requested their waitress take of them all on the day Sportacus had proposed, just before they left the restaurant. Their eyes are still somewhat red from the tears they’d shed earlier, but each of their smiles is warm and genuine. 

“Thank you.” He pulls Stephanie into a hug and presses a kiss into her hair. “I’m going to set it right beside my monitor.”

They eat, wash up, and then the three of them end up watching a few back to back home improvement shows to be sure that the primer has enough time to dry before they get back to work.

At one point Robbie leans over to Sportacus and asks, “accent wall?” under his breath.

“Wallpaper, or wood panelling?” Is Sportacus’s response, and Robbie purses his lips together briefly as he puzzles it over.

“You know what, let’s settle on the paint colour before worrying about any of that.”

Sportacus chuckles under his breath. “Okay Robbie.”

When the show comes to an end Stephanie eagerly herds them back to the car and not even fifteen minutes later Robbie is pouring paint into their trays.

Pink is still Stephanie’s favourite colour and the hue that she’d chosen for her walls is soft, light, and reminds Robbie of cotton candy. Stephanie grips her roller excitedly and Robbie smiles at her as he finishes pouring the paint.

“Go on then. Your room, your walls, let’s see what this colour looks like spread out all over.”

Stephanie dips her roller into the paint with a grin and turns to the wall, gliding broad strokes of pink up and down the surface. She slows to a stop and takes a step back, looking it up and down critically before throwing a delighted look over her shoulder.

“It looks good!”

“Yes it does,” Sportacus agrees easily, dipping his roller into the paint. “And it’s going to look even better once we’re done, right Robbie?”

“Of course.” Robbie grabs onto his own roller with a smile.

The painting seems to go by even faster than the priming, and soon enough they’re all standing back to take in their handiwork.

“We’ll see what it looks like once it’s dry, and if we have to we can add another coat of paint in the morning,” Robbie says as he puts down his roller. He’s happy to have this one small thing completed, beyond pleased that the house is starting to look like a place that belongs to them. 

“We’ll clean off the rollers and the brushes in the laundry room and then we can head back and get some sleep.”

“We didn’t end up getting paint on our clothes at all,” Stephanie says, and she actually sounds unhappy at the fact that they’ve all somehow managed to stay clean despite the effort they put into finding old clothes that they wouldn’t mind getting dirty.

That will not do. Not at all.

Robbie picks up a brush, dips it into the remaining paint in his tray, and quickly swipes it across her shirt.

Sportacus presses one hand over his mouth, whether to conceal a smile or out of genuine shock Robbie isn’t entirely certain, though he certainly hopes it’s the former.

Stephanie stares at him for a moment before a grin breaks out across her face and she jabs at him with her paint roller. Robbie attempts to dodge but doesn’t make it away scot-free, a trail of pink scrawling up his arm. He retaliates with a jab of his own, but Stephanie is quick to duck out of the way and picks up a paintbrush in her other hand.

“Surrender,” she demands, brandishing her dual weapons.

“Never!” 

Robbie rushes at her and gets a front covered in pink in the process, though he does manage to get a few more swipes in on Stephanie as well.

“Robbie, Stephanie.” Sportacus has both palms raised in a placating gesture, but he’s smiling too widely to really be taken seriously. “Am I going to have to step in and play mediator?” 

“No,” Robbie replies simply before taking advantage of the distraction to swipe his brush up Stephanie’s arm. 

Stephanie laughs and rushes to take cover behind her father. Sportacus smiles cheerily at Robbie, shifting to block Robbie’s side-to-side movements to keep Stephanie sheltered behind him. Robbie’s attempts to get her leave little trails of pink across Sportacus’s pant legs, and soon enough Stephanie circles around her father and happily flicks her paintbrush in Sportacus’s direction as she goes.

Splatters of pink mottle all along his shirt and arms like the most adorable freckles Robbie has ever seen. Robbie joins in with a laugh, eager to mark Sportacus up some more. 

Sportacus winks at him before darting to the side, unaffected by the continued joint onslaught against him as he grabs Stephanie in his arms and hefts her up, swinging her around several times before setting her down again.

She giggles, swaying lightly as she re-orients herself, and Sportacus adds his own stripe of pink across the front of her shirt before he turns his attention to Robbie, who’d paused his bombardment to smile at the scene in front of him. 

Robbie takes a step back at the look on Sportacus’s face.

“That sure was fun, wasn’t it? But we probably ought to put an end to it before someone gets paint in their eyes.”

Sportacus chuckles, a mischievous glint in his eye, and he presses one hand against his paint roller before setting it down into a tray. He slides his palms together and approaches Robbie slowly.

Robbie backs into a corner, careful not to get too close to the wall, and smiles as sweetly as possible.

“Sportacus, really, there’s no need for this.”

“I disagree.”

Sportacus purposefully cups Robbie’s face in his hands and kisses him, then pulls away with a wide smile.

“Did you know that pink suits you?”

Stephanie laughs brightly in the background. Warmth unfurls in Robbie’s chest.

“Of course it does. Every colour suits me, I’m radiant.” 

“You are.” 

Sportacus curls his fingers into Robbie’s shirt and reels him in for another kiss. 

It doesn’t get any better than this.

**Author's Note:**

> Now I think I have to start planning... _A wedding???_  
>  Anyone wanna help me plan this wedding because I don't know if I'm mentally/emotionally prepared for it, oh gosh.


End file.
